2015 Best of World Honoree

Today, Sun Light & Power was recognized for creating the most positive overall social and environmental impact by the nonprofit B Lab with the release of the fourth annual ‘B Corp Best for the World’ list. The ‘B Corp Best for the World’ list honors businesses that earned an overall score in the top 10% of more than 1,200 Certified B Corporations from over 120 industries on the B Impact Assessment, a rigorous and comprehensive assessment of a company’s impact on its workers, community, and the environment. Honorees were recognized among micro, small, and mid-sized businesses around the globe.

The B Corp ‘Best for the World List’ sets the gold standard for high impact companies and demonstrates any type of company can use business as a force for good. It has inspired the Best for NYC campaign, the first municipal public-private impact partnership in the world to support businesses to create more high quality jobs and improve the quality of life in local neighborhoods, all while strengthening their bottom-line.

Additional 2015 Best For the World Honorees include Echale a Tu Casa, a social housing production company in Mexico, Oliberte, a Canadian premium leather goods company that sustainably sources its materials from and manufactures in Africa to create pathways out of poverty and California’s Beneficial State Bank an innovative, triple-bottom line, community development financial institution and provider of the B Corp Credit Card. The 120 ‘Best for the World’ companies come from 49 different industries such as manufacturing, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and finance. 37% of honorees are based outside the US, with companies operating in emerging markets such as Afghanistan, The Republic of Korea, and Brazil. See the full list here.

“Today’s honorees inspire all companies to compete not only to be best in the world, but best for the world. We hope many will take the first step by using the B Impact Assessment to measure and manage their impact with as much rigor as their profit,” said Jay Coen Gilbert, Co-Founder of B Lab, the nonprofit organization that certifies B Corporations and governs the independent third party standard used to generate the comparable assessment of corporate impact.

B Lab simultaneously released separate lists recognizing the companies ‘Best for the Environment’ (environmental impact), ‘Best for Community’ (community impact), and ‘Best for Workers’ (employee impact) which can be found here. A total of 350 companies were named 2015 Best For the World Honorees, including King Arthur Flour, Natura, d.light designs, New Belgium Brewery and Cooperative Home Care Associates. The 2015 Best for the World Honorees represent nearly one-third of all B Corps, displaying a wide range of excellence throughout the community.

Each honored company is a Certified B Corporation. These companies use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems and have met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Today there are over 1,200 Certified B Corporations, across 121 industries and 38 countries, unified by one common goal: to redefine success in business. Any company can measure and manage social and environmental performance at bimpactassessment.net.

Sun Light & Power

Since 1976, SLP has created renewable energy solutions in the state of California that help preserve the planet’s vital resources and hedge against the rising cost of energy. They have cultivated the depth of knowledge and professional talent to serve a broad range of commercial and nonprofit clients, encompassing new construction and retrofit projects for office and industrial sites, over 250 multifamily housing developments, food service businesses, schools, places of worship, non-profit organizations, utilities, government buildings, and more. SLP is a local, sustainable solar company established to last. They are a Certified B Corporation and a CA Benefit Corporation as well as an Alameda County Green Business. They are licensed (#326203) and NABCEP certified.

B Lab is a nonprofit organization that serves a global movement of people using business as a force for good. Its vision is that one day all companies compete not only to be the best in the world, but the best for the world and society will enjoy prosperity for all for the long term.

B Lab drives this systemic change by: 1) building a community of Certified B Corporations to make it easier for all of us to tell the difference between “good companies” and good marketing; 2) passing benefit corporation legislation to give business leaders the freedom to create value for society as well as shareholders; 3) helping businesses measure, compare and improve their social and environmental performance with the free B Impact Assessment; 4) driving capital to impact investments through use of its B Analytics and GIIRS Ratings platform.